


she who is brave is free

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 08:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: “Anytime you need me, you hear? Just call. Send a bird and I’ll come.” His voice is unusually thick, and he turns his face aside to cough. There’s a gleam in his eye that Celica knows is not moonlight, or torchlight. “I’d come from my grave if you called me, lass.”In which the queen releases her sworn sword.





	she who is brave is free

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow Saber and Celica's friendship is one of my most favorite SOV-relationships and I just. (gestures inarticulately)
> 
> Special thanks due, as ever, to Winny, who is a most wonderful boon companion to flail about with in FE hell.

Close to midnight, Celica finds him in the stables with saddlebags slung over one shoulder, vacillating over which stall to open.

They are far enough from the castle that the ball is a faint, formless cloud of candlelight at their backs, and its music spills through the open windows and rises on its own wings, up and up until the quiet of the night closes in to embrace it. Celica decides this is what peace sounds like, the melodies and the silences both.

He left the door ajar when he came in. He doesn’t notice her presence now, standing in the half-dark with his back to her; she waits for him to stop moving, one hand on the door of the third stall on the right, before speaking.

“Not that one, he’s lame. Take Yarrow, the grey in the back. She’s not the fastest, but she’s the best over long rides.”

Saber pauses. When he turns over his shoulder, the measuring look he gives her is one she knows well. “Seems a waste for you to be walking out on your own party, Your Majesty.”

“The castle has been without me for ten years. Surely it won’t miss me for a few more minutes.” Even as she says it she’s aware of the weight of her mother’s circlet on her head—its dangling moonstone, its delicate, web-thin chains.

She knows she could do worse. She could ask him why he meant to leave without saying goodbye. But she finds, upon reflection, that she doesn’t need an explanation, and figures it would be wrong to demand one regardless, when in the beginning he had promised her far less than this.

They step out together when he’s finished saddling up, Saber leading Yarrow by the reins, Celica matching him step for step. There’s no need for them to speak as they walk. She understands his impatience with words, with their annoying tendency to lose their own meanings somewhere between mind and mouth. For her part, she’s learned to cherish the silences she can share with others—they are chances to stand beside each other and breathe, to rest at ease if only for a while.

As they draw up to the castle gate and leave the last of the candlelight behind, Celica chances a look up at the sky, knows she must trust it to light his path forward now. And then she asks him the question that’s been pricking at the edges of her mind all evening, because some things need to be made real by words.

“Where will you go?”

Saber shrugs, like it matters little. “Here and there. Town to town.”

“Are you afraid of what lies ahead?”

“I could ask you the same question.” He tilts his head to regard her with his one good eye. “Sometimes it takes more guts to stay, you know.”

She almost smiles. Only he talks to her this way, like she’s both young and old, soft and armored, utterly clueless and wise beyond measure all at once.

 _No,_ she wants to say, but also _Yes._ She settles in the end for “A little,” and knows he hears the truth, tangled up in knots as it so often is with her.

This has always been one of her worse habits, keeping secrets, saying always less than she means, especially with regard to her own troubles; more than once he’s called her bluff when no one else would.

“You don’t have to be on your own anymore,” he tells her. “You’ve got your brother now, and that young man of yours, and all your knights. Tons more lining up at the door tomorrow to swear fealty, I bet.”

_I know, but—_

“But you won’t be here.”

She hadn’t meant to _say_ it, by any means, until she had. The frightening thing is that he seems to understand. There’s no anger in his face—only a rueful smile, and then a sigh, a soft, gentle exhale into the wind.

“You know I don’t belong here, lass.”

_You’re my sworn sword. You belong wherever I am._

But this is too selfish a thing to say, so she chokes it back, with effort. This world he helped her build is so much bigger now than both of them, and the last thing she would ever want is to tell him what to do with his freedom. _But still—_

She doesn’t realize she’s begun to cry either, pieces together only belatedly what the stinging behind her eyes and the tightness in the back of her throat mean when she hears her own breath rattle. She brings her fingers to her cheeks and touches water—and, unguarded and ashamed, can only cover her face with her hands.

“Aww, hell. Hey, don’t cry.” If she searches her memory she can probably count the number of times he’s seen her tears on one set of fingers, so it’s entirely not his fault that he seems at a loss for what to do or say now. His recourse is to drop the reins and pat her head, gingerly, as if he’s worried about disturbing her circlet. “Those guards of yours are like to run me through if they see you like this.”

For a moment she wavers, split in half. She knows Anthiese the queen is waiting below the surface, pulling herself tight, drying her eyes. But closer at hand is Celica, the girl who wears the crown, who wants nothing more than to tear her hands away from her face and take the last two steps forward to embrace her friend. It’s Celica who decides, Celica—

“Celica—”

“I don’t care if you’re smelly.” She says it mostly to prove that she can. Through her tears, she laughs, and it’s not long before she can hear him laughing too, the rumble of it in his chest its own small victory.

She doesn’t let go until she feels his arms lift around her and squeeze her so hard she can’t breathe. He’s still holding on to her shoulders when he steps back.

“Anytime you need me, you hear? Just call. Send a bird and I’ll come.” His voice is unusually thick, and he turns his face aside to cough. There’s a gleam in his eye that Celica knows is not moonlight, or torchlight. “I’d come from my grave if you called me, lass.”

“I certainly hope not.” That makes her laugh again, wipe at her face with the back of her hand. They both know it’s best for the dead to stay dead, but she’ll take the offer anyway, because it was freely made. “But thank you, I will.”

He looks at her then, a long, hard look; she has enough of her strength in hand at least to meet it with steel. The silence opens out, breathes, settles between them steady and strong, and then Saber is squeezing her shoulders for the last time before he lets her go, swinging up onto patient Yarrow’s back in a single unbroken motion made smooth by years of practice.

She notes that he still keeps the dagger she gave him buckled at his hip. The golden sheen of the metal is faded now with wear, the ruby in the pommel crosshatched with scratches—and yet, were he to draw it in salute for her now she has no doubt the blade would still catch the torches’ flame as brilliantly as the first time she ever held it in her hand. She’s certain it would still cut as sharply too, in his care.

In her heart of hearts she’s still surprised that such a little thing would buy her as much of his time as it has. Or maybe it’s something else, some price she didn’t even know she could pay. An intangible, shining thing, something like loyalty, some hope.

She will ask him about it, she thinks, when she sees him next—if the choice to stay is no less free, even if he’ll tell her she already knows the answer.

“Go with love, Saber.”

“My queen.” He dips his head, the sketched outline of a bow. In response, Celica stands taller, straighter, and lifts her arm to signal the guards in their towers.

She doesn’t move to go back inside, even as he turns his horse and lets the castle fall behind him. Instead, she stays, watching as he spurs Yarrow into a canter and the gates open to release them onto the road beyond, unfurling without end under the gaze of the brave, immovable stars.


End file.
